The percentage of people of color in nonprofit executive director roles has remained under 20% for the past decade. To increase the number of people of color leading nonprofits, the sector needs a new narrative about the problem and new strategies to address it. Nonprofits have to transfer the responsibility for the racial leadership gap from those who are targeted by it (aspiring leaders of color), to those governing organizations.
General
Nonprofit Media Coverage of the Arts in California: Challenges and Opportunities
The California Arts Council recently completed an evaluation of our support of nonprofit media organizations in California, specifically as it relates to arts and culture coverage and related projects.
The central activities in this evaluation project include a June 2016 in-person convening of high-level California public media leaders, and the development of a subsequent report assessing the challenges and opportunities of supporting arts and public media in our state.
This report is the first of its kind for California, and we hope this will be the start of a conversation about the many opportunities for supporting public media’s engagement with arts and culture — and that it will bring awareness to the important work that is taking place in the field right now.
As readers will see in the report, these findings have benefited our Council’s programming decisions, with a revamped arts and public media grant program coming in 2017.
The Arts in a Digital World
The first report, The Arts in a Digital World – Literature Review, explores how artists and arts-related organizations in Canada and around the world have adapted to the digital era while also influencing it. The report is based on an extensive literature review and interviews with arts funding organizations from most parts of the world. The second report, The Arts in a Digital World – Survey Data Report, presents a snapshot of the impact of digital technologies on Canada’s arts community, in terms of creation, dissemination and business practices.
Careers in the Arts for People with Disabilities National Online Dialogue Brief
“What ideas do you have to increase the career preparation and employment for people with disabilities in the arts?” This question was posed to participants in an online discussion hosted by the NEA in partnership with the National Arts and Disability Center (NADC) and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) in June 2016. Using ODEP’s ePolicyWorks online dialogue platform, this conversation engaged 390 participants representing artists, arts administrators, arts organizations, arts educators, arts employers, and disability organizations, who shared feedback from their own experiences and offered ideas about how to improve employment outcomes for people with disabilities in the arts. This brief provides a summary of these ideas and recommendations for the field.
ARTS DEPLOYED: An Action Guide for Community Arts & Military Programming
A collaboration between AFTA’s National Initiative on Arts & Health and the Military and the Local Arts Advancement departments, Arts Deployed is a guide for arts organizations and artists interested in bringing creative arts programming to military and Veteran communities, their caregivers, and families.
Arts and Culture Are Closer Than You Realize: U.S. Nonprofit Arts and Cultural Organizations Are a Big Part of Community Life, Economy, and Employment – and Federal Funding Enhances the Impact
In March 2017, the Trump Administration formally proposed the abolition of the two federal agencies that support arts and culture in the U.S., the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Elimination of federal support is not about the money, which only comes to 45 cents per capita for the NEA or .003 percent of the federal budget. The decimation of federal support is the coup de grâce of a long campaign carefully crafted to mislead the public into believing that the arts are irrelevant to most Americans.
